2007 writing year in review

I have very little to show for 2007; only one completed short story that’s so far been rejected twice.

I did write a fair bit through the course of the year. Several writing weekends produced a fair amount of text. But the words I produced haven’t amounted to much. It was a year of dead ends and false starts. Nothing came together.

Self-doubt about stories’ viability again and again seemed to be the norm. I had no shortage of ideas for settings, plot points, but couldn’t seem to make a decision, and when I did couldn’t not stick to a decision.

So why not?

I would say that the story ideas have merit. It might be my own impatience to deal with all of them that I can’t sort  them out one at a time. I think I’m also looking beyond each story to see if they might fit into something larger and so how will each story either hold up or break down as some comprehensive setting evolves.

It’s time to start focusing more. Time to be more decisive and stop second guessing. I might make a poor choice, but as long as I make a choice then I progress to the end of a story.  Once I finish a story I can move on to another idea. If a story I write is actually successful, and an opportunity to write a sequel comes up, I can deal then with the choices I made when I first wrote it. Trying to anticipate an entire universe of stories is a mistake.

The ideas will wait and new ones will come. If an idea’s good it will still be good later when I have time to get to it. And in the meantime an old idea might combine with a new to the benefit of both.